With so many intact needles it looks more like a chumushi and the flavor seems to be right between asa and fuka. This is the best tea I have tasted from Den's. Grassy and herbal with little sweetness. It doesn't have the bass notes I normally associate with fukas. Overall I like it quite a bit and would certainly consider buying it.

Lots of marine flavor with herbal and grass following in suit. A little sweetness and umami show up in the third brew. I’ve had Fuji the Ultimate and did not care for it and this tastes quite a bit like it. The way the flavors come together just doesn’t do much for me. Certainly not a bad tea just not my thing.

Today brewed up the sencha supreme from Adagio (A4), solo, in my small kyusu at work, and shared it with a colleague. It is sweet, mellow, just a hint of astringency in the 2nd infusion. I gave the first infusion to a colleague and forgot to save a sip to take notes on, but aside from that hint--just a hint--of astringency in the 2nd infusion, the 2nd-4th have been very sweet and vegetal, even a little floral, with the 5th starting to fade significantly. Doing this at work, I can give temps--160+/-5 degree water all the way through, 5 oz kyusu, about 5 grams of tea, and time was 45 seconds (kyusu not preheated), 20 seconds, 30 seconds, 1 minute, 2 minutes.

Tried the Maruyama from Maiko (A3) today...following the recommended brewing parameters fairly closely. But I used the entire sample in a 360ml kyusu...I suppose I use a bit more leaf than I thought in my normal brewing since it didn´t look like the right amount until I emptied the sample bag.

4 infusions...impressions are very marine seaweed and minerals flavours and some nice sweetness not a lot of change in flavour from infusion to infusion.

I was a bit surprised how subtle the differences between Asa and Fuka are...it´s was nothing radically different...

I suppose both are sencha so they´re not really that different

Anyway, I really enjoyed it and I´m looking forward to trying the other samples!

Long dry leaves. Tastes grassier than the others I have tried (so far A1 and F1.) Good after taste with floral notes with a slight welcomed astringency to keep it going. Could have increased steeping times a bit. Nice though.

I know have a new kyusu on its way. A Banko. Hopefully it will be here within a week or so. I may hold on to my OTTI samples to do and side by side comparisons between Sado and Banko.

This has rounder more mellow flavors than the Fuji and I liked it better. Having said that...nothing stood out that differentiated it from many fukas I have tasted. Price wise when I compare it to O-Cha's offerings it just doesn't stand up to YM or SAE Midori. More on par with Chiran perhaps.

Would be a nice house sencha but why not buy YM or SAE Midori for about the same price?

I will say that it has produced 4 good infusions with no problem...and probably five but I am done for this morning.

5th, 170 degrees, 75 degreesgrassy, briny, again, that sense of richness without the deep umami of some of the fuka senchas & gyokuros I've tried before, a mild sweetness, very nice, the higher leaf to water ratio makes this quite impressive